


he turns me to gold in the sunlight

by chartreuser



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 11:58:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/chartreuser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy refrains from returning Thomas's feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he turns me to gold in the sunlight

He is a man of questionable values, one of no guilt as he fucks like an animal and thinks like a child; a person whose heart is too numb to crack.

(But oh, he is not, and it hurts, it hurts **so badly**  when he cannot love the man he dreams every night—)

She’s a maiden that does not deserve any of this, he knows, just a girl that has not yet learnt the ways of the world; a little lamb compared to the wolf that lures her to his den every night. She falls prey to sickly sweet lies murmured into her ear, and Jimmy samples and devours her as if she is a meal concocted for his consumption alone.

The desperation he feels to be in Ivy’s place is devastating.

 _Thomas Barrow can annihilate the body of James Kent all he wants_  is a thought that crosses Jimmy’s mind frequently, his heart and soul have been disintegrated into the disgusting acid of love, lust, and everything in between— _all that’s left is hatred now_.

He is a man that likes to distance himself from everything that surrounds him, Jimmy has noticed, his eyes a trap to the mice that threatens to seek whatever there is inside. A devil not to be trusted. Thomas Barrow is a criminal, one that grabs and plunders men’s hearts as if they are goods to be sold.

(But where does he sell them to, one might wonder—The gatekeepers of hell? An angel banished from the heavens? A monster that rots in fairytales, with maidens and princesses slipping from its grasp like sand? Or is the answer simply nowhere to be found?  _No_ , Jimmy thinks, Thomas is a man that feasts on his love every morning like coffee and toast, a fiend that converts JImmy’s feelings and emotions to deplete as energy.)

"I love him," he pronounces carefully in front of his mirror daily, a common habit before breakfast, where his infatuation with Thomas would be devoured, abrogated to lust and sins and greed that can only be quenched by the man himself. His eyes are like wine; have enough of them and you would be drunk, enslaved to the man’s good graces.

James Kent has always wanted to be an alcoholic, a man with liquor racing through his veins to salvage the dying heart that suffocates in its cage.

-

He knows the story of a boy that has fallen in love with another of his gender, the tragedy of an artist lost to his own thirst of the forbidden.

Like all stories, there is a message that underlies between the words of it all—it words may change and shift like human nature but the purpose of it all is still the same; a warning towards mankind that all there is to life is to reproduce and bring up children for men’s society.

(Jimmy relates stories to Thomas, a mystery to be solved—jump upon something good and you’ll be craving for more, and more,  **and more** , until all you can think about all day is that book and everything it means to you and steal it away from the library because it  _belongs_  next to you in your bed, there to accompany you every time you fall asleep thinking of it.)

Except, he knows, that something as beautiful as the construction of a story should not hurt the author, the composer themselves, when it exists to enlighten another, not tear and strip away layers of skin to to wrench your heart out and laugh in glee.

(But he does not mind, he is addicted to the pain and the stinging sensation of pressing onto a bruise and will not, can not live for another day if the burn goes away. It’s like an open wound, reminding you that you are alive and that God has not deserted you, not just yet—or maybe he has, watching the human race decompose languidly, delightfully, the world a simple amusement to himself.)

James Kent will not be that boy, but a man that encloses himself with beauty and vanity because he is not one for stories; those are for little girls clad in dresses and he is… well. 

He is a man far more deserving than that to have a tragedy as his own ending.

-

"I do not understand why you persist on being so stubborn. You want me, Jimmy. Admit it." Thomas’s whispers are an atrocious, repugnant thing; it corrupts your mind and detracts whatever sanity that is left boiling in your own brain,  **seduces**  you with the promise of sex.

"I don’t. You’re just setting yourself up for a misfortune this way, Mr. Barrow."

"Are you sure? I would rather dig my own grave than be dishonest, James."

"How kind of you to assume things that only I would know, my friend." Jimmy grits the words out of his teeth,  _spits_  it out as if it is something revolting and offensive like his failure to even bring himself to undress this man in front of him.

They are alone, and Thomas’s hand is on his chest, reaching into his body to claw at the mortal organ within him. It beats to the sound of the banshee’s calls in hell, a forewarning for the storm that would brew if Jimmy did not watch himself and the man before him.

"I do not assume as easily as you think, James. I have evidence enough to know what I am saying, what I am hypothesising ” The gloved hand taps on his shirt as if a door, and Jimmy feels his breath hitch, almost takes a bite of the apple that dangles in front of him.

"Well, then. You hypothesis is completely wrong." His heart pounds in his chest, a signal to the horror that has wrapped his hand around his waist—despite his cries of  _ **'no, please, don't!'**_  which starts in his head like sirens to a mermaid. A warning of the men that comes to drag them home as trophies, a saviour.

Thomas draws a line across his bare chest, ghosts his breath along his nipples as he lets Jimmy grind his cock against his thigh, his hold on him sufficient to send shivers up his spine even though he’s  _barely doing anything at all_ —

(And it feels so good,  **oh it feels so good**  and Jimmy Kent understands the artist now, wants more of this man; he ought to tie him to a bed and eat him there and then, cut his heart out to eat as breakfast—)

But Thomas Barrow is a dream that should only exist in his head, and he should take precautions to make sure that it would stay this way—if he doesn’t want to end up a ruined man, if he doesn’t want to end up as the stupid, stupid boy—

"No, no, we can’t do this, get out, GET OUT!" 

His shouts have never been so foreign in his ears as he pushes the man out of his room, tears streaking down his face like mud as he sniffs and wails because it hurts,  _it hurts even more_  and Ivy is a girl he does not want to destroy and  _ **he just can’t do this and he wishes that Thomas could stay by his side forever**_ —

But James Kent is not a man with a dead heart, even when Thomas Barrow has drained up every last bit of his sanity, because he is a man far more deserving than that.


End file.
